[K12OSN] teachertool config

Jim Kronebusch jim at winonacotter.org
Mon Jul 17 13:05:01 UTC 2006


On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 08:21:26 -0400, James P. Kinney III wrote
> Is it possible to have a per teacher config to allow only access to the
> TC's in their class? Something like a .ttoolrc file maybe.
> 
> Imagine the fun when teacher A accidentally disconnects a student in
> teacher B's room since they run off the same server :)

I have thought the same thing in the past, but on a little different line. 
Say you have clients for administration and staff as well as students down the
line.  In that scenario any teacher that you give access to TeacherTool will
automatically have access to all other admin and staff machines.  I could see
being able to configure per user control lists even more of a necessity in
this situation.

Currently in our schools, we don't give teachers access to such tools.  But as
the number of workstations would hopefully increase, it would be nice to
offload some of that management to the teachers.

If I look at the OSX model for Apple Remote Desktop the security is a little
more configurable.  Although the model of TeacherTool is awesome in the fact
that there is no configuration, by default all clients just show up and work,
there isn't much to change it.  In apple's version you can assign control
passwords to each client, multiple if you want, and you can give each password
certain priveleges.  That way if some rogue user gets on the network with ARD
they need passwords to perform any tasks.  Maybe all student machines are
password "student" and all admin machines are password "admin", then you only
give the student password to teachers and keep the admin one in the IT
department.  That offers the ability for more control.  You can also setup a
"teacher" password, so that if a teacher would use that password they could
only observe or control, but not copy software.

That being said, I don't know how you would keep the out of the box just works
model of TeacherTool with no configuration and no building of lists and still
provide the ARD type of configurability.  Some how TeacherTool would have to
look at the group assigned to the user running TeacherTool to get what
privileges that user has, then look at the groups assigned to each logged in
client user to determine which users the teacher has the rights to control. 
It would be best in this scenerio to have TeacherTool build the visible list
only out of clients the connecting user has rights to in order to make things
less confusing.  Then there would have to be a rights configuration screen
available only to the root or master user in order to set up which and what
rights users had to control certain groups.  

Sounds like a lot of work, but if the above paragraph is possible it would
still allow for automatic setup out of the box with all clients automatically
added, but still allow for a breakdown of control like requested.  If those
features were implemented, TeacherTool would hands down kick ARD's a$$.  I
hate having to configure ARD and lists all of the damn time.

Side thought, if TeacherTool did have these abilities built in, could it also
be modified in the future to be able to be used to "push" items or changes to
specific groups?  Teachers maybe have the ability to push assignements to
student desktops, admins push new apps to staff or drop a new bookmarks file
to the student group?  

Hmmm....Maybe this software could have more power than I ever thought and
solve some other administration issues, of course, with a lot more work.

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